USAID Pakistan Regional Economic Integration Activity (PREIA) Monthly Progress Report July 2018

This objective supports the achievement of Development Objective (DO) no. 2 from USAID/Pakistan's Mission Strategy: "Improving Economic Status of Focus Populations and Sectors." Focusing primarily on trade promotion and facilitation, PREIA will collaborate with public and private sector stakeholders in Pakistan to improve the international trade environment, resulting in increased trade and transit volumes. PREIA supports relevant public and private sector stakeholders in Pakistan to augment the Government of Pakistan's (GoP) ability to develop and implement reforms for policies, laws, and regulations, ultimately improving Pakistan's trade enabling environment. The activity also aims to improve private sector and civil society's engagement in policy-making for inclusive, effective, and transparent trade-related policy development and implementation. Additionally, PREIA seeks to improve regional trade and transit facilitation by Customs for increased capacity to access regional markets and establish regional business-to-business linkages for improved regional trade and economic connectivity. During the month of July 2018, PREIA's procurement operations continued, with the processing of pro-forma invoices for two procured items/services with the Economic Affairs Division (EAD) through USAID to seek a GST exemption. The activity also continued procurement-related tasks for the "Made in Pakistan" Trade Expo, scheduled to take place in Almaty, Kazakhstan, from October 11-15, 2018. Following the advertisement and shortlisting phase, two event management companies submitted their technical and financial proposals, and after successful negotiation and evaluation, the selection committee finalized the selection of M/s Eurasian Trade Events to execute the expo. The security situation in Pakistan remained a concern during the month of July, with several major explosions occurring in the Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa regions, resulting in the loss of 180 lives and injuring 200 individuals. The electoral commission granted the military unprecedented arresting powers and allowed the deployment of 371,000 troops, the largest ever allotted for an election period. The general elections of July 25, 2018, were marred by a high level of violence across the country, and allegations of fraud and vote-rigging marked the second time in the country's history that a civilian government has transferred power to another civilian government. PREIA's security team's mission is to protect its staff by minimizing preventable risk, which will enable the implementation of project activities safely. This is ensured through sharing of incidents, staff awareness on security policy/SOPs in case of security threats, and regular updates on the security situation through security advisories to mitigate the risks. A proactive security approach is adopted using security groups, networks, and open-source media monitoring. PREIA believes that a high standard of security risk management is necessary to achieve excellent service delivery in the challenging environments across the country. The technical implementation of PREIA's activities continued during the month of July, with support provided to the Trade Dispute Resolution Organization (TDRO) for the development of the Trade Dispute Resolution Commission. The activity also conducted negotiations on the proposed methodology, scope of work, and budgetary estimates with two final shortlisted companies for the analysis report on back-end business processes of the various Other Government Authorities (OGAs) involved in the goods clearance process. The vetting information is currently being compiled by PREIA and will be submitted to USAID VSU in August 2018.